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Outside of our bathroom window, there is a huge limb that was torn down by a massive thunderstorm last year. I was able to get most of its almost twenty-five-foot length sawed off and hauled away but the chainsaw I used stopped working. It was my intent to get to the last, biggest, ten-foot portion of it but never did. Yesterday, while mowing the grass, I noticed there was a plant growing out of the long-dead limb. What was lifeless and useless had become home to new life.

Today is a friend’s birthday. It is a bittersweet day because it is the first one she’s had in over forty years that she cannot share with her partner who passed away. It has been a hard day for her. She has friends who are looking after her, a family that’s doing their best to care but it’s not the same. There’s not an hour that goes by she doesn’t think about him. Not a day where her heart doesn’t ache from the hole death has left in her life. However, in the midst of loss, new growth has begun. It’s slow and most days unrecognizable but it’s there; a new courage and a new strength. The new life doesn’t replace the loss. It grows partly because of and in spite of it.